Friday, December 24, 2010

Merry Christmas...

...and a happy new year to you
It's Christmas Eve, and we were so hoping we would be living in "the forest" house by now.. but it was not to be.  The projected move-in date is now January 15th.  In the end it doesn't really matter, and another Christmas in a rental house that does not feel like home is not a real problem.  It could be worse, and as always at this time of year my thoughts turn to how fortunate we are for what we have, and who we have around us.  So on that serious note, I am giving myself permission to relax amid the mess and the boxes so that I don't forget this Christmas completely.  Oh, and eat some chocolate while listening to my favorite Christmas tunes.  That always helps.

2 comments:

Maureen said...

As you get close to finishing your house how do you feel you have done in getting the house as green as possible? and what is the one thing you could change if you could? MM

mika said...

hmmm.. good question... as far as getting the house as green as possible, I think we did a good job of balancing green with durability, and meeting our budget and time constraints. That said there are lots of ways we could have gone greener! A cob or haybale house might be greener than concrete block, but in order to be cost-effective you need lots of time and free labor (neither of which we have available right now) to build that kind of a house. It might be fun to try some techniques like this on smaller "outbuildings" in the future. I feel confident that we will end up with a very healthy and comfortable home, with the industrial modern feel we love.

The one thing I would change? I would have loved to use an architect to get the effect we wanted with the roof. In magazines like Dwell you read about people who have found architects willing to use unconventional materials, work within your budget and on a quicker timeline. That would be too cool. We did interview a couple of architects but the costs and timeline we were quoted were prohibitive.